The 10 Most Pet-Friendly Airports in America

Traveling with pets can be challenging. You have to find pet-friendly hotels and restaurants, not to mention having to figure out what type of transportation you’ll take. A new ranking of the 10 most pet-friendly airports in America makes the whole process a little bit easier for pet parents, though.

According to Upgraded Points, an online resource that provides information on credit card travel rewards, New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport is the best airport for animals in the U.S. The site took different factors into account, including the number and quality of “pet relief stations” (places where animals can pee without other passengers getting peeved), onsite boarding and daycare facilities, and other pet perks, such as dog parks with water fountains. The airports were ranked according to a point system, with 10 being the maximum number of points awarded; JFK Airport received a perfect score.

“JFK is definitely the airport to beat when it comes to pet-friendly amenities,” the site said in its analysis. “Multiple terminals have access to post-security pet relief areas, so you’re never far away from one without having to leave the secured area of the airport.”

The airport provides 24/7 access to veterinary services for all sorts of animals, as well as plenty of potty areas. One of the terminals even has a 4000-square-foot outdoor garden patio, better known as the “wooftop,” where doggies can get some fresh air and run free. (It also beats waiting for your plane in a stuffy gate area.)

Despite being the busiest airport in the world with nearly 104 million passengers last year, the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport still finds time to cater to four-legged travelers. It received a score of 9.5, making it the country's second most pet-friendly airport. Some of its selling points include indoor pet-relief stations in every concourse (with faux fire hydrants adding a nice finishing touch) and a 1000-square-foot dog park.

Keep scrolling to see the full list, and visit the Upgraded Points website for a detailed breakdown of the data.

10 Vacation Destinations That Ended Up in the Dictionary

Thinking of getting away from it all this summer? How about France? Italy? The Mediterranean? Or what about somewhere more exotic, like north Africa or southeast Asia? Well, no need to pop down to your local travel agent to find out more, because all of these can be found much closer to home in the pages of a dictionary …

1. Genoa, Italy

In the early Middle Ages, the city of Genoa in northwest Italy became known for its production of a type of fustian, a thick, hard-wearing cotton fabric typically used to make workmen’s clothes. In English, this cloth became known as gene fustian in honor of the city in which it was made, but over time genealtered to jean, and the hard-wearing workmen’s clothes made from it became known as jeans. The fabric that jeans are made of today, however, is denim—which was originally manufactured in and named for the city of Nîmes in southern France.

2. Paris, France

Speaking of France: The Romans knew Paris as Lutetia Parisorum, meaning “the swamps of the Parisii,” after the name of a local Gaulish tribe. It’s this Latin name, Lutetia, that is the origin of the chemical element lutetium, which was discovered by a team of scientists working in Paris’s Sorbonne University in 1907. Not that Paris is the only city with an element named after it, of course: hafnium derives from the Latin name for Copenhagen, Denmark; darmstadtium takes its name from Darmstadt in Germany; and holmium is named for Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Speaking of which …

3. Sweden

A light napped leather made from the softer underside of animal hides, suede has been manufactured in northern Europe for centuries. But it wasn’t until the early 1800s that soft, high-quality suede gloves first began to be imported into Britain from France, when they were sold under their chic French name of gants du suèdes—or, the “gloves of Sweden.” The name soon stuck, and eventually came to be used of the fabric suede itself.

4. Milan, Italy

If you’re looking to buy a chic hat to match your chic Swedish gloves, then you’re best off heading to your local milliner’s. Millinery takes its name from the Italian city of Milan, from where all manner of high-end fashion accessories, including laces, gloves, handbags, and hats, were imported into England in the early 17th century. The name milliner—which was originally just another word for a Milanese person—eventually came to refer to anyone involved in the sale of such products (Shakespeare used it to mean a glove salesman in The Winter’s Tale), but over time its use came to refer only to someone involved in the hat trade.

5. Dubrovnik, Croatia

From Italy, it’s a short ferry trip to the stunning Croatian city—and UNESCO World Heritage site—of Dubrovnik. Like Paris, it’s Dubrovnik’s Latin name, Ragusa, that has found a permanent place in the language. In the late Middle Ages, the city became known for its large fleets of merchant ships that were known across Mediterranean Europe as ragusea, but in English this name eventually simplified (and metathesized) to argosy.

6. Cyprus

In Latin, copper was known as cuprum (which is why its chemical symbol is Cu, not Co). In turn, cuprum is a contraction of the Latin phrase Cyprium aes, meaning the “Cyprian metal,” because historically the Mediterranean island of Cyprus was a principal copper mine of the Roman Empire.

7. Mahón, Spain

Another Mediterranean island to have (apparently) found its way into the dictionary is Minorca, the second-largest of Spain’s Balearic Islands. When the island and its capital, Mahón, was captured by France during the Seven Years’ War in 1756, a local speciality was supposedly taken home by the victorious French troops: sauce mahonnaise, as it was known, made from a mix of oil, vinegar, and egg yolk, eventually became a popular condiment and garnish and was first introduced to the English-speaking world as mayonnaise in the early 1800s.

8. The Canary Islands

Another Spanish island group, the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa, gave their name to the small finches that were found there by European settlers in the 16th century. The wild birds were originally a dull greenish color, but have since been domesticated and selectively bred to come in almost any color possible, although traditional yellow canaries are by far the most familiar. Despite their contribution to the language, incidentally, the Canary Islands themselves are actually named after dogs.

9. Tangier, Morocco

Head northeast from the Canary Islands and you’ll reach the Moroccan port of Tangier on the Straits of Gibraltar, which in the 18th century gave its name to a small, slightly darker-colored variety of mandarin orange that was grown in the area—the tangerine.

10. Sri Lanka

The word serendipity was coined by the English author and historian Horace Walpole, who wrote in a letter to his friend (and distant cousin) Horace Mann in 1754 of a discovery that was “almost of that kind which I call Serendipity.” Walpole explained that he had taken the word from “a silly fairy tale” called The Three Princes of Serendip, whose title characters “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.” It might come from a “silly fairy tale,” but the magical land of Serendip is actually a real place—it’s an old name for the island of Sri Lanka.

Environmental Group Lets You Kayak European Waterways for Free in Exchange for Picking Up Trash

Between airfare, hotels, and dining out, not every traveler to Europe has room in their budget for a kayaking tour. GreenKayak, an environmental organization based out of Denmark, offers tourists and locals a way to explore waterways in some European countries for free—they just have to be comfortable with picking up some trash along the way.

As Lifehacker reports, GreenKayak launched its pollution-fighting initiative in April 2017. The concept is simple: Volunteers receive free kayak rentals in exchange for using the trip as a chance to beautify their surroundings. Two hours of free kayaking time comes with a paddle, a life vest, a trash-grabber, and a garbage pail. In the past two years, GreenKayakers have collected close to 24,000 pounds of trash from lakes, canals, and rivers in Europe.

GreenKayak started its environmental project in Denmark, a country that's famous for its picturesque waterways. The initiative has since expanded to cities in Ireland, Germany, Sweden, and Norway. Anyone interested in taking a free boat tour and making the world a cleaner place can book a kayak for up to two people through GreenKayak's website.

Kayaking isn't the only way people can clean up polluted waterways in Europe. Amsterdam is home to the Plastic Whale: an open-air boat made from recycled material on which tourists can "fish" for discarded trash.